More shaving goodies

I recently found an online bar­ber sup­ply house that has Pin­aud Club­man prod­ucts avail­able at some really great prices, so I placed a small order with them.

I really like Club­man after­shave, so I ordered some of their other scents — Vir­gin island Bay Rum, Musk, Vanilla and Spe­cial Reserve.

All right, all right, so the order wasn’t so small after all. But the prices were good enough that I fig­ured I may as well stock up.

I man­aged to pur­chase a 16 oz. bot­tle of Club­man for only 26 cents more than I gen­er­ally pay for a 6 oz. bot­tle at the local phar­macy. And the way I go through the Club­man around here, that’s a great bargain.

If you’re inter­ested in another source for shav­ing sup­plies, I picked this order up from Apple­ton Bar­ber Sup­ply. It worked out even bet­ter than I had hoped, as I man­aged to get this pack­age overnight, via reg­u­lar ground ser­vice UPS. How can you beat a deal like that?

After liv­ing here nearly 6 years, I’ve finally decided to start adding some color to the walls. I’m sick to death of all the white. I’m still look­ing for the ‘per­fect’ color for the mas­ter bath, but the theme for the room has already been deter­mined. Old-style bar­ber shop. So I even ordered a Bar­bi­cide jar, as part of the dec­o­ra­tions for the bath.

I had been keep­ing my col­lec­tion of shav­ing cream tubes on the coun­ter­top and I needed to move them to the shave cab­i­net I recently installed. As I was stor­ing them in the cab­i­net, the tube of Pro­raso called out to me.

As men­tioned a few days back, I’ve been doing some ultra-secret and high-tech shav­ing soap test­ing for Mama Bear. I’ve devel­oped quite a col­lec­tion of Mama Bear shav­ing soaps and have been hav­ing excel­lent luck with them. I had been using a small Vul­fix shav­ing brush that was a bit stingy about shar­ing lather with me, so I talked to Gio­vanni at Bar­bi­eria Ital­iana about a new brush. He rec­om­mended an Omega 33175 brush to me. And now, I’m rec­om­mend­ing it to you. Wow, this brush is really nice. And, as you can see, it’s a good look­ing design, as well.

Since I’ve been try­ing all of these Mama Bear soaps, I had yet to try this new brush out with a cream, so tonight was the night.

I did my usual hot towel treat­ment and then mixed up an amaz­ing bowl of Pro­raso lather. I was astounded at how well this brush worked with the cream. I’ve been quite impressed with how it was work­ing with soaps and didn’t antic­i­pate it work­ing so well with creams. A very pleas­ant surprise.

As you can already guess, I had a Derby blade loaded into my Merkur 23C razor. I did my usual three– pass shave and then fol­lowed that up with a cold water rinse and a healthy splash of Club­man Vir­gin Island Bay Rum aftershave.

Wow, I’ve been get­ting some really great shaves of late, but I’m not so sure this wasn’t the best of the lot.

I’ve seen some gents make the com­ment that a BBS shave isn’t nec­es­sary, but when I’m pro­duc­ing that kind of shave on a reg­u­lar basis, it’s pretty dif­fi­cult to accept any­thing less.

I’ve three, very nice straight razors in my pos­ses­sion now. And I’ve been get­ting some prac­tice with how to best use them, but a true BBS shave is not in the cards just yet. And that ends up being a prob­lem, because I know I can get a smooth as glass shave with my Merkur/Derby com­bi­na­tion. So, when decid­ing to use a straight razor, I’m admit­ting to myself that I’m going to end up with less than per­fect results.

I need to stop think­ing that way, so I don’t get neg­a­tive about using a straight razor. The blades are far too nice to just let them sit around un-used.

I’ve been watch­ing Leisureguy’s blog and keep­ing track of his progress with using oil for a last pass clean-up. It sounds inter­est­ing, but with the results I’m get­ting, I can’t see what I would gain by try­ing this technique.

I’ve got a new bath soap order placed with Mama Bear, so I’ll report on those when they arrive and I get a chance to use them.

Related posts:

1. More great shav­ing soap
2. Another remark­able shave
3. I can’t wait that long
4. The Great Shave Exper­i­ment continues
5. Two bath soap must-haves